Legalization of marijuana is debated at CPAC — Here’s how it went down

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The debate over marijuana legalization at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference re-filled the conference’s main ballroom after a few hours of venue-emptying panels Thursday afternoon, reports TheBlaze.com.

The arguments were, “Think of the children,” versus, “Everybody’s doing it” — and if those two cliches weren’t enough, the debate kicked off at 4:20 p.m.

Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico and libertarian presidential candidate, took the pro-weed side while former New York Republican Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle argued against legalization.

“Having a debate right now over whether or not to legalize marijuana is kind of like having a debate over whether the sun is going to come up tomorrow,” Johnson said, drawing cheers from the audience.

“I am one of the 100 million Americans who have used marijuana,” he added. ”I am anything but criminal for having done that.”

While Johnson donned the mantle of sometime-weed-smoker, Buerkle burnished her credentials as a “mother of six and grandmother of 16,” setting the tone she’d adopt for the entire debate.

“We are on the cusp of finding out just what kind of damage this drug can do,” Buerkle said, comparing marijuana today to tobacco in the 1950s. ”Do we want to stupefy our youth? That’s what marijuana and drugs do.”

She also harped on the damage that drug addiction can wreak on families, and referenced ”brain-scrambling mental effects,” cancer-causing properties and addictive qualities of marijuana smoking.